


Red Sky At Morning

by mousecookie



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, S6 fix-it for Earth 2, Ugh, anyway I'm angry and this is the result, but post 6x02 and Arrow 8x01, not technically canon divergent because they didn't MENTION IT, written pre-6x03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 07:03:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21114704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mousecookie/pseuds/mousecookie
Summary: It was, without a doubt, the fastest that Jesse Wells had ever run in her life.





	Red Sky At Morning

It should have been just another day, another bank heist thwarted, another round of applause from the adoring public. But Jesse Wells - currently dressed for action as Jesse Quick - knew something was wrong.

There was a red haze on the horizon. Not the pretty kind of red from sunrises and sunsets, although that too would have been cause for alarm as it was morning and the sun was already up. But no -- it wasn’t a sunny red. It was a sharp, hungry red. And it was moving fast, consuming the distant reaches of Jesse’s vision. Even in her meta-enhanced Quick Time (which Jesse had enterprisingly re-named from Barry Allen’s ‘Flash Time’), the glittering red wave was fast enough to be visibly approaching. Landmarks were disappearing. The whole sky was being  _ eaten _ . And it was headed right for Central City. 

A deep, primal fear crept up Jesse’s spine. She knew one thing, and one thing only: she didn’t want to get caught in whatever was coming.

She looked helplessly at the bustling city around her. All the people - the small crowd frozen in mid-applause for her victory, the triumphant police officers, even the sour-faced bank robbers in cuffs. There was no time. She was used to not having much time as Jesse Quick and was used to finding ways to make the most of what time she had. But this was different. This would be… relocating a whole city in a matter of minutes. Maybe less. She had exactly one of Cisco Ramon’s breach tokens back at her headquarters in the basement of S.T.A.R. Labs. 

It wouldn’t be enough.

Jesse spent a whole five seconds of real time paralyzed by the knowledge that she was going to have to leave most everyone here to die.

Then she swallowed, took a breath, and blurred into the fastest sprint she could manage. She arrived at S.T.A.R. and phased through walls until she reached the basement. Grabbed the token. Grabbed her techie friend, Bree Larvin, from her station without dropping out of Quick Time. She didn’t have the luxury of explaining this to anyone.

She phased out to the S.T.A.R. Labs parking lot and activated the breach token. In Quick Time, it didn’t get very big - just a tiny baby breach that could fit only… well, a baby. Jesse would have to wait for it to expand and rescue other people in the meantime. She left Bree hovering in the air and zipped away to find the most important person she could think of, the one person she couldn’t leave without.

Harrison Wells, who only tolerated certain people of Earth 1 calling him “Harry”, was frowning over a doctorate-level physics textbook when Jesse appeared in the house in a blur of lightning. 

“Dad!” she gasped aloud with relief, though she knew he couldn’t hear her in Quick Time. She’d been so afraid he’d be out somewhere in the city, on his quest to re-learn everything he’d known before dark matter ravaged his brain - lurking in the university library, or hounding his old colleagues to explain his own research to him. Somewhere she wouldn’t be able to find him in time. 

In a blink, she picked him up and returned to S.T.A.R. The glowing breach had expanded to a diameter of a few feet. Carefully, she pushed him through the breach and nudged Bree in after.

Took another breath.

Okay. Her father and best friend were safe. It was time to save as many people as she could. 

Jesse ran. She grabbed everyone she could see. Families out having breakfast. Homeless men and women from alleys. Shop-keepers and baristas and people in nearby office buildings, including S.T.A.R Labs. She spent a precious second grabbing mayor Snart from the podium of a speech in a nearby park, then the sparse crowd. All the residents of a nearby apartment building.

The red haze grew closer, licking the edges of the city. Moving in. When Jesse looked at it, she saw exactly what she had feared: annihilation. Skyscrapers were turning to dust.

Her lungs burned and her muscles screamed as she seized people and threw them into the breach with increasing urgency. It was full sized now, and so she didn’t stop to shepherd each person through. She set them in motion towards the portal and ran for the next. Distantly, she knew the breaching room of S.T.A.R. Labs on Earth 1 would be uncomfortably crammed with scared people. They wouldn’t know where they were or how they got there.

But that wasn’t her concern, now.

Her concern was running. 

In real time, people were starting to react to the red wave - pointing at it, faces full of wonder or fear or confusion. Some people started running away from it. It was relentless.

It took a little longer to chew through buildings, Jesse noticed, but it devastated the streets. Anything in open air was being quickly swept away.

With a pang, she realized that perhaps she should have used the breaching room in S.T.A.R., behind all its thick walls, where the old stable breach to Earth 1 from the time of Zoom could have been activated. But then she’d have had to waste energy phasing through walls. But would more people have been saved? She didn’t know. The weight of her choice might be terrible.

She began crying as she ran. The soles of her feet felt hot, burning, and she knew she was running more and faster than she ever had in her life. The people around her were running too - panic had set in amongst the public. But it wouldn’t matter, except for the lucky few who could see the portal in front of STAR and make it there in time. And there was precious little time.

Finally, the obliterating red mass reached the edge of S.T.A.R. Labs. Crashed into it like a wave. And kept eating.

The parking lot became a small oasis in all the chaos, protected by the buildings around it. The breach portal was a tiny blue blip against a red sea. Jesse scanned frantically for anyone left to save, but the few remaining people running towards the Labs from across the road were consumed.

Then, S.T.A.R. Labs itself was gone.

Jesse was alone.

The island of asphalt around her was shrinking, and soon, the red wave would take the breach too. She couldn’t allow that to happen - what if this deadly substance could cross worlds? She needed to get to Earth 1 and close the breach from the other side with Cisco’s token.

With one last surge of adrenaline and desperation, she sprinted through the glowing blue portal. 

She felt fresh air on her face from the other side - clicked the breach token - and promptly sank into blackness.

\-----

“I don’t understand, what’s going on?”

_ “Where are we?” _

“Were we kidnapped?”

_ “Where’s my mom? I want my mommy!” _

“I demand answers!”

The crowd of refugees in Earth 1 S.T.A.R. Labs filled the atrium, all shouting over each other in their agitation and fear. A shaken Mayor Snart stood on a receptionist’s desk and began to address them.

“This is a different Earth,” she told them, projecting over the noise with the practice of a public speaker, even if her smooth demeanor was gone. “We were rescued from a terrible event by Jesse Quick. We don’t know what happened. All we know is that for now, we are safe.”

The crowd erupted into questions and shouting again.

Barry Allen looked on from the sidelines, his mouth pressed in a grim line. Iris West-Allen stood at his shoulder, equally grave. Their Earth-2 doppelgangers were not among the refugees.

Away from the noise of the crowd, in the medbay, Jesse Quick lay still and pale on a cot under the watchful eyes of Caitlin Snow, Cisco Ramon, and her very worried father. The bottoms of Jesse’s shoes were worn right off. The exposed soles of her feet were blistered and red.

“My tests are showing she’s just extremely hypoglycemic,” Caitlin told Harry gently as he clung to his daughter’s hand. “She ran herself out. Other than her feet, she’s not injured. She just needs a speedster-style IV drip and a lot of rest.”

“She saved me,” Harry said, gaze fixed on Jesse’s sleeping face. “She saved all of them.”

“Yeah, she did,” Cisco replied quietly, resting a hand on Harry’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “She did good.”

Harry tenderly swept a lock of hair away from Jesse’s brow. “What was it?” he asked, not looking away. “I never even saw what it was.”

Cisco gulped. “Antimatter, we think. Exactly as bad as it sounds.”

Harry’s jaw worked. “Total destruction?”

“Yeah,” Cisco let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. “My scanners are showing that Earth 2 is... gone. Completely.”

Harry inhaled sharply, then let it out in a hiss. “We have a lot of work to do.”

Cisco nodded. “Yeah. Yeah we do.” Then he looked at Caitlin and squared his shoulders. “And I’m gonna need my powers back to do it.” 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from the old mariner's rhyme used for predicting if a storm was coming:
> 
> _ Red sky at night, sailor’s delight _
> 
> _ Red sky at morning, sailors take warning _


End file.
